My shame

I get so sad.
I feel like I shouldn't in some way, and in the same way I should! While hundreds of kids get killed or abandoned or neglected every day, I cry over the one I am able to capture glimpse of. I want to see the world, but if I want to do that I can't feel sad for every soul. But isn't that just what everyone should. God, do I make any sense??

I know people whom choose to censure what they read on the base that the world is just to cruel, I can understand that.
I know people who try to see it all, know it all, and that can talk about the war and epidemics as something far away - mainly unaffected (it seams) by what happens. I can understand that.
..and of course all the people in between, were I probably will land somewhere.

One baby gets abandoned, she died (or was already dead) in a bag from a cloth store. I read the story and I start feeling so sad, like wanting to cry for that poor baby never getting a chance.
For days I have read news from Gaza, I am disturbed and I want to scream out the unfairness for the kids dying in every war or conflict. But I don't sit down and want to cry in the same way as for this baby, why?

This I ponder, and I also got some possible answers.
I think we all have to try to censure in a way so we can handle what we absorb of the world around us. Not something we do conscious, but more a habit in how and what we chose to read further.
About the poor baby here in Norway - this I read on nett and I listened to the radio - this is were I get my news mostly. From the radio the news is uncensored by me, unless Emily is close and I turn it off in cases with men killing kids in the kindergarten, not all news are necessary for a six year old. So, I listen to the news and I get informed. I later read news online.
I think back to what kind of stories and headlines I "clicked" to read more about in the Gaza conflict. Were did my interest lye, what did I look for. Mostly politics (though that is not my main area of interest!), less about whom and how people were killed. This is of course a case were politics is heavy, but there has been lots of focus on the casualties. There was also a debate here in Norway on if it was wrong to show a kid dead in the ruins, on the cover of newspapers. I followed that debate, but didn't look at the pictures, didn't attach to the case as such.
(Ouch, I read what I write and wonder if I sound cold or without feelings. This is not the case, even though it might come out that way....The perceived coldness continues--)
When I now sit and read - again - about the baby. I realize one big difference (in relevance to what I'm trying to conclude to here). This story has a limited amount of tragedy in a way. If I look at this story I can find a few related stories to other babies abandoned earlier, it counted eight since -82 here in Norway. I read about the bag and people that discovered that baby, about the police investigating. Then I can't read anything more, I can digest and my feelings can absorb what and how(during and after).

For the other stories, the stories of tragedies never ending, families reduced to one member, or extinguished. For every soul dying there are hundreds of stories connected, other experiences. I could read for ever, I could go every day feeling sad and sorry. (Maybe we all should, but not all the time (!?!))
I don't know, I think I automatically censure some stories because I know how hard it will be to read this story. I can read everything around it, I can know the story is there. But I just can't bear to read it as a whole. Maybe if I did... then maybe I couldn't any longer be able to not do anything... then maybe I also had to do something... and maybe I am just to absorbed in my happy, comfortable life here in little Norway. Maybe I should care a little bit more about the world. Maybe my life would feel a little bit better if I cared a little bit more. Then I think - would it matter.... and then I am back to my mode and excuses for not doing anything yet again! It just isn't enough writing this down, but this is what I do. It is at least something, isn't it?

It is easy to slip into a parallel universe. There are so many of them: worlds of the insane, the criminal, the crippled, the dying, perhaps of the dead as well. These worlds exist alongside this world and resemble it, but are not in it.

Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted, 1993